ABOUT THE LEVEL 85 BEGINNING RAIDER

Once you hit 85 and you’ve gotten yourself mentally prepared to start running raids and Heroic versions of instances, your old 80-85 leveling gear isn’t going to cut the proverbial mustard any more.

The first raid you’ll look at running will most likely be Bastion of Twilight, Throne of the Four Winds, or Blackwing Descent, and this guide will get you ready to run it using Heroic instance drops, high-cost purchases, and even one or two raid drops (hey, you’ve got to run it a few times just to get the feel for the thing, right?).

ENCHANTING RAIDING GEAR

Though you may be considering shucking off your newly-acquired low-level raiding gear for mid-range gear quite quickly, do consider good enchantments to be a non-optional part of gearing for raiding at any level. You’ll need the boosts enchantments give you, particularly regarding mana return, too much to miss out on their benefit regardless of cost.

23 thoughts on “Disc Priest Cataclysm Gear: The Beginning Raider”

I had friends telling me already just how quickly the new greens and blues are actually gonna be purple, so this list comes really handy! =)
and I agree spi all the way before all else at this point, all the mana-starving posts about priests lately have left me worried to say the least.

Relatively cheap, if you don’t mind plying a little effort/time in gathering or dropping a bit of coin on materials – and a nice little piece of equipment you can drag with you through heroic level dungeons and use as an entry level raid piece of equipment.

You might not be able to add it to the header for your entire site, but it says you should be able to “Add this piece of HTML code anywhere on your page:”

For a post like this one, should be able to add it in the background HTML for the post, I would think. If I had a WP site (maybe I’ll ask Alas for her old site credentials to look) I could find where that happens.

I am putting haste further up the list now (haste>crit)with the way that Divine Aegis has been changed to always proc with prayer of healing. I’m using prayer of healing now much more often than PW:S. Not sure what lvl 85 is like, but I am sure it must be fairly similiar in terms of which spell gives better throughput.

Could you do the world a favour and add Wowhead tool-tips to your page please!!! You have a great guide, and you have already done all the work by adding the base href links. All you need to do is slip the code at the end of this message into the section of the site and you are away :D

You mention that Spirit is important, however when I look at your list, and cross-reference the items that I can buy with Justice Points, I see that you Always rank the piece that has 0 spirit, rather than the one that has spirit on it.

I suppose you could argue that many players didn’t save up Justice points before the expansion, but I have over 4K JP to spend to get raiding quickly.

I went with the cloth Spell DPS gear instead of the Spell Spirit gear because I find that you can pick up the Spirit you need much more easily from non-JP gear slots- no one’s going to fight you for Spirit boots, for example, in a raid, so most of the gear you’ll get as drops will have Spirit on it (you won’t be fighting the mages). You’ll probably be able to get all the spirit you need from those pieces, and therefore should fill out your other stats with the JP gear.

But the more and more I play, the more I really think you can get away with less Spirit.

Thanks. I just need to make a decision about the priority of spirit before I spend all these JPs. Since I haven’t run a 10 man in cataclysm yet, it’s hard to know. I do tend to need to drink to top off my mana alot in 5 mans, so I’m concerned about regen on the longer 10man bosses. But if you think it’s okay to just get Spirit from drops rather than the JP buys, I like that approach alot. That worked well in Wrath where sprit was useless for Disc. I’m also tempted to run the heroic 5mans a few more weeks before spending JPs, but they’re burning a hole in my pocket, and I’m close to hitting the cap. lol.

Though, a little worried about you putting Spirit as number one stat compared to the new patch changes incoming as Shields will be absorbing more. So, with this bearing in mind.. Shouldn’t it be Intellect > Mastery > Crit > Spirit > Haste?

Intellect is by far the most important stat for raiding because several of a priest’s mana-back abilities are based on your mana pool. Archangel, Rapture, Hymn of Hope, and Shadowfiend all return back a percentage of the priest’s mana. If the priest utilizes these abilities correctly, he/she should never have mana problems in a raid.

P.S. Too many priests don’t take advantage of Archangel! It’s such a great buff to healing and a great mana conservation tool. Also patch 4.1 plans to include Holy Fire to work with Evangelism/Archangel/Atonement – so if you don’t have it already I suggest picking it up!

I’m very confused about your stat prio in combination with the list you made. Also mastery isnt even in your stat prio wich is weird.
Some have already said something about the spirit not being on your listed items but here an example:
Wrist slot
the number 1 vs the nr 5, both heroic.
(bronze flight vs the burning eye)
they’re exactly the same apart from bronze flight having 143 mastery for the 143 spirit from burning eye.
wich leads me to think you prioritise mastery over all else.
So wich is it? spirit (=> longevity) or mastery (=> throughput)

Just wondering… your guide is called “The Beginning Raider” and in the intro you say “this guide will get you ready to run it using Heroic instance drops, high-cost purchases, and even one or two raid drops”

But then a significant portion of the gear you link are 372 drops that you won’t get until you’ve cleared the normal raid, probably several months into your raiding.

I came here looking for gear to get me ready to raid, and its hard to find it. I know that you can’t do WoWHead pop-ups, but you should add a note for each piece saying where it drops. That way I can ignore the items that are way out of my reach and focus on the things that I can get right now.